‘Contractors’ Archives
Where Did I Learn to Write Spanish So Well?
And how the hell did this end up being published in Spain? The world works in mysterious ways. Nice to be translated into Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Chinese and Tagalog. Por David Phinney WASHINGTON, Oct. 27, 2006 (IPS) - La confusión dominó en marzo de 2005 a John Owen, un estadounidense de 48 años que trabaja desde hace27 en la [...]
Babylon Rising in the Jet Age
Things began looking more sketchier than ever to John Owens as he boarded a nondescript white jet on his way back to Iraq in March 2005 following some R&R in Kuwait city. Working as a general construction foreman for First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting, the lead builder for the new $592-million US embassy in Baghdad, Owen remembers being [...]
Press Release
The news from the $592-million embassy project rising up along the Tigris is not pretty. Low wage workers from South Asia are being smuggled in from Kuwait to help push up the profit margins of the contractor, First Kuwaiti Trading and Contracting. Once there, First Kuwaiti managers are said to physically assault their workers, and provide paltry [...]
Asian Workers Smuggled to Build World’s Largest Embassy
Oct. 17, 2006. CorpWatch, Alternet, Inter Press Service, Asia Times, Counterpunch and others (October 2006). Recipient of Project Censored award and Online News Association fiinalist for investigative journalism. Helped trigger investigations by US Justice [...]
US Mum on Huge Embassy in Baghdad
That's the headline of a story by Knight Ridder's Leila Fadel on the new Baghdad embassy. She notes the contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting, "is a relative novice in embassy building and has been criticized for its treatment of Asian workers, who, critics say, are imported because they can be paid low wages, and because they [...]
Reporting on Fort Apache, Baghdad
The news stories about the new US embassy sprouting up in Baghdad's Green Zone are now in full bloom. The Associated Press headlines New U.S. Embassy in Iraq cloaked in mystery. USA Today chimes in with Giant U.S. embassy rising in Baghdad. What's missing? The fact that the Kuwaiti-based contractor building the embasy wasn't the lowest bidder, [...]
Law Violated, But Pentagon Offers No Names on Contractor Human Trafficking
From: DAVID PHINNEY Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 12:41 AM To: Mace Brian A LtCol MNF-I Deputy IG Subject: Brian, I am a reporter for CorpWatch and contributor to BBC. As you may recall, I began researching labor conditions and allegations of trafficking last July. I was then told the issues I raised were under investigation. (SEE BELOW) I [...]
Noted by UPi
Documents obtained by David Phinney. The U.S. military in Iraq has demanded that the passports of all employees of contractors and subcontractors serving the military in Iraq be returned to them by May 1. It is also insisting that the thousands of civilian workers in Iraq and Afghanistan are given at least 50 square feet of personal living space [...]
Pentagon Attacks Labor Trafficking by US Contractors
by David Phinney April 24, 2006 -- It has been long in coming. The Pentagon is now demanding that contractors fight labor trafficking and lousy working conditions in Iraq endured by tens of thousands of low-paid south Asians working under US-funded contracts in Iraq. In an April 19 memorandum to all Pentagon contractors in Iraq and [...]
Labor Trafficking in Iraq…..
This is an interesting development according to a KBR worker who complained about working conditions of low-paid Asian laborers working under US contracts. The development follows my series on the working conditions and trafficking of south Asians Blood, Sweat & Tears along with Cam Simpson's series that followed in The Chicago Tribune: I have [...]
